Broadway’s snarling new ’Cat’  Scarlett Johansson

Those are Maggie the Cat’s final lines in Tennessee Williams’ classic stage tale of frustrated love, tortured lust, greed and mendacity.

Tennessee’s three-act epic about a Southern family falling apart is best known as a sanitized but still sizzling 1958 movie starring Elizabeth Taylor as the wife in heat and Paul Newman (Brick) as her inexplicably disinterested husband.

Onstage, Brick’s motivations for not wishing to sleep with his luscious wife are somewhat clearer, but only somewhat. The supposition that Brick and his “best friend” Skipper, who commits suicide, were “more than friends,” is still shrouded in hysterical denial. Except, interestingly, from Brick’s dying father, Big Daddy Pollitt, who if not approving, at least seems to understand where some men’s needs lead them.

Williams’ play is having another revival at the Richard Rodgers Theatre this season, starring Scarlett Johansson, the sexy movie star, as the frantic Maggie. Plus the mighty attractive Benjamin Walker (“Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”) as the confused, bitter and temporarily crippled Brick. His character suffers a broken leg during an alcohol-fueled accident.

The problem? Well, even though the show is supposed to be about a lack of sex between the participants, neither Scarlett nor Benjamin appear to have ever been interested in the act. She is — as Williams’ intended — coarse and loud, but perhaps Scarlett takes it too far. (As brilliant as Elizabeth Taylor was on screen, she was, at that point, still a bit pristine and MGM-glossy to be entirely believable as a once-poor girl who had to wear “...a hand-me-down from a snotty rich cousin I hated.” She was, however, quite sympathetic in her efforts to lure her husband back to performing his marital duties.) Miss Johansson, on the other hand, is possibly too brash to elicit much sympathy.

“Cat” is a long play and the actress often rushes her lines and swallows Tennessee’s dialogue. (Of course, if she spoke any slower, we’d still be in the theater!) She is attractive, in and out of her slip, but hardly erotic. Strange, for a young woman so well-known for her allure. It is undeniably interesting to see this actress away from her usual quiescent roles, raising her voice and attempting to take charge, but her efforts seem self-consciously strenuous.